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Plumb Foil Lagoon

#3ab9dc
Notes

Plumb Foil Lagoon (#3AB9DC) is a true cyan with a vibrant character. It holds its own as a focal accent, carrying visual weight without tipping into neon territory. Its HSL profile (193°, 70%, 55%) places it in the balanced band at a mid lightness. It works across type, buttons, and borders, saturated enough to feel deliberate but balanced enough to not fight the rest of the palette. For a confident two-color system, pair it with its complementary red. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#3ab9dc
RGB
rgb(58, 185, 220)
HSL
hsl(193, 70%, 55%)
HWB
hwb(193 23% 14%)
OKLCH
oklch(73.2% 0.118 220.5)
HSV
hsv(193, 74%, 86%)
LAB
lab(70.01% -22.86 -27.45)
LCH
lch(70.01% 35.73 230.21)
CMYK
cmyk(74%, 16%, 0%, 14%)

Etymology

Plumb
adjective

Latin plumbum, lead — referring to the lead-weighted plumb-line of pre-modern carpentry. As a color modifier, plumb implies a clear-and-vertical-true quality where the hue carries the visual register of gravity-aligned-and-perfectly-vertical surface. Sits at the crisp-and-balanced end of the grid, parallel to level and squared in usage.

Foil
modifier

Old French fueille, leaf. As a color modifier, foil implies a thin-rolled-metal-leaf quality, the visual register of hand-rolled-and-beaten-foil hand-rolled-and-beaten-thin gold-and-silver-and-tin-foil hand-rolled-and-beaten-thin-foil surfaces under hand-rolled-and-beaten-foil workshop-light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to gold and gilt in usage.

Lagoon
noun

A shallow body of saltwater partially or fully enclosed by a barrier — coral atoll lagoons in the Pacific, Venice's Laguna Veneta, the Florida Keys' backcountry. The color refers to the average reflectance of a calm tropical lagoon at midday: a saturated, slightly muted blue-green with the optical clarity of shallow water over white sand. Brighter than reef, cooler than aquamarine, with the postcard weight of a Pacific atoll seen from above.

Closest matches

The nearest named color in three reference sources, ranked by perceptual distance (ΔE76 in CIELAB). ΔE < 1 is imperceptible to most viewers; ΔE > 10 is clearly different. When two sources point to the same hex they’re merged into one tile; click any to open that color’s page.

Variations

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Harmonies

Accessibility

Color-vision simulation

How this color appears to viewers with the four major color-vision-deficiency types. Computed via the Machado (2009) physiologically-based model. If a tile matches the original, the color reads the same to that viewer.

#3ab9dc
Original
#a4b4de
Protanopia
#8ea4dc
Deuteranopia
#00c4c4
Tritanopia
#a1a1a1
Achromatopsia
WCAG contrast

The color used as foreground text against pure white and pure black, with the contrast ratio and WCAG 2.1 grade. Aim for AA (4.5:1) for body text and AA Large (3:1) for 18 pt+ headlines; AAA (7:1) is the gold standard for long-form reading surfaces.

The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
Failon White
2.29:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAAon Black
9.15:1

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